Undergraduate School of Medicine Blog

Teaching, Learning and Integration Committee Summer Update

By Lindsay Davidson, Director of Teaching, Learning, and Integration

As classes (at least in years 1 and 2) have now ended, and teachers are perhaps thinking about courses that will resume in the fall, I wanted to provide you with an update of items from the TLIC. Some of these may already be familiar to you, but perhaps some are “new”. If you need any further information, please feel free to contact me directly or one of our Educational Developers (Theresa Suart from Years 1 and 2 and Sheila Pinchin for Clerkship and the “C” courses).

Resources attached to learning events – these include lecture notes, classroom slides, required pre-class readings and optional post-class readings/resources. MEdTech is enabling a new feature for the upcoming academic year. Teachers will be required to review and “publish” each resource every year – with the option of adding in delayed release if appropriate. The goal of this is to provide students with an up-to-date, curated set of resources, deleting old files. Please direct any questions about this to Dr. Lindsay Davidson.

Remember: “less is more”: Students report that when there are an excessive number of files, they often read few/none of them in advance.

Clearly designate what is MANDATORY to review PRE-CLASS by indicating this in the “Preparation” field on the learning event, and checking the appropriate boxes on the menu when you review the resources.

AVOID using dates on your slides/slide file names – students are sometimes disappointed to see that the file dates from 2009 or prior.

The Curriculum Committee has approved a new learning event type – “Games” – reflecting several sessions already existing in the curriculum. This is defined as “Individual or group games that have cognitive, social, behavioral, and/or emotional, etc., dimensions which are related to educational objectives”. This type of activity might include classroom Jeopardy or other similar activities designed to allow students to review previously taught knowledge (content delivered either independently or in the classroom) and to provide them with formative feedback on their understanding. The instructional methods approved by the Curriculum Committee include:

Please direct any questions about this to Theresa Suart.

Workforce – The Workforce Committee has recently adopted some changes including the following:

Addition of credit for teachers who grade short answer questions or team worksheets

Doubling of credit for teachers who develop new (or significantly renovate) teaching session

Limit of one named teacher per DIL event

Limit of one teacher per SGL event (gets additional credit to reflect session design, learning event completion, submission exam questions); additional teachers credited as tutors (credit for time in the classroom) – the Course Director may be asked to clarify who is the “teacher” and who is/are the “tutors”

Reduction of credit for large classroom sessions (that are not new/newly renovated and/or do not involve grading)

Please direct any questions about this to Dr. Sanfilippo.

Tagging of Intrinsic Role objectives. The TLIC and the Intrinsic Role leads recently held a retreat. One of the items that was identified was “overtagging” of sessional objectives with intrinsic role objectives such as communicator, collaborator, professional etc. by well meaning teachers. We are undertaking a comprehensive review of how these Intrinsic Roles are taught/assessed in the curriculum and would ask teachers/course directors NOT to tag sessions with these unless there has been a direct communication with the relevant Intrinsic Role lead.

DIL feedback from students. Over the past year, we have received useful feedback from students regarding the content and structure of Directed Independent Learning (DIL) sessions in Years 1 and 2. This will be collated and communicated to Course Directors shortly. Theresa Suart will be in contact with teachers/Course Directors should any sessions be identified for review/revision.

New wording of learning event notices. You may have noticed this over the past year. The wording of the 3 email notices received by teachers has been revised. In particular, it has been streamlined and customized to provide specific, focused reminders prior to the scheduled teaching. We would appreciate any feedback or suggestions that you have about this change.

Video capture In 2016-17, lecture sessions were video captured in select year 1 and 2 classes. We will be analyzing how these videos were used by students over the summer and will likely be continuing this into the fall. Please provide any feedback or comments that you have about this pilot to Theresa Suart.